


A Million Miles (How Far Did You Get?)

by Scumprince



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: 90's AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Porn, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Steve Feels, Steve Harrington Has a Crush on Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, highschool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:09:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scumprince/pseuds/Scumprince
Summary: She pulls him down with her onto a bed that smells of deodorant and spittle. A bright image appears like a lamp in Billy's inner eye.Steve smiling filthy sweet, arching like one of his cats as he stretches. Billy grabs it and wraps it round himself, so that by the time she's got her skintight jeans over her ankles, and his own pants over his, he’s in the other room, dreaming with the one person who'd never do anything like this to him.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	A Million Miles (How Far Did You Get?)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!   
> I currently have writers block in regards to DOG TEETH, so I've just been busting out Harringgrove like the piece of shit raccoon I am

It's funny how it happens. One day they're just two kind-of friends, marking time and making grades. Then a night comes where Steve dreams that someone puts their mouth on the dips in his collarbones and the next morning, when he sees Billy Hargrove get out of his car, his heart fucking stops.

When someone's pushed you to the ground and splashed you with gasoline and has a lit match held aloft, you have two choices.

One is screaming and cowering; this is natural.

The other is grabbing the match out of the bastard's hand and finishing the job yourself.

Steve reaches for the match.

The flames chew up his arm and leap to his throat. It feels good to supply fuel, to be useful, even if it's only a conflagration that he's feeding.

*****

Understand that it's not a catastrophe; life is not a movie, where every emotional bubble and shift is subject to agonizing soul-searching and people get beaten to death with tyre irons. Steve chalks it up to the familiar old bogeyman, puberty, which has already mashed up his voice and oiled his skin and set hair sprouting in odd places.

What does disturb him is that the familiar guidance-counsellor words don't seem to apply. _Attraction_ is too still and stiff; _crush_ sounds girlish, something that amounts to a boyband shrine. _desire_ is ridiculous, _lust_ makes him want to break things, _fascination_ is too tame.

In the end, he doesn't call it anything. It's just a hot band wrapped around his heart, a flurry of wings beating in his chest. It tastes like a marshmallow melting in cocoa and feels like a smoking needle to the eyeballs. But fuck it, it makes his life interesting. He makes sure to include Billy in his plans for weekend. They go bowling with a scattering of other, lesser friends; they watch movies at one a.m. in each other's sitting rooms.

One night, Billy’s kind of drunk, and Steve is too. It's the best kind of drunk; a warm, lazy slide into blacking out.  
They're watching something crappy as a sort of dare. It might even be a _Care Bears_ movie Billy found in an old box in the garage- and they're sitting on the floor, kneeling back against the couch. They quit the "babbling mindlessly about stupid shit" stage of inebriation a half-an-hour ago. Now, there is only sleepy, contented silence.   
Steve picks at the label on an empty beer bottle. "You remember when those people came in to tell us that gay was normal?"

Billy thinks back to the time they got a talk from the local _LGBT Association_. "Yeah."

Steve scrabbles at the label. "So, what did you think? Did they look normal to you?"

Billy sort of rolls back his shoulders, too pissed and lazy to shrug properly. "They looked like regular weirdo college kids. I mean, it's not something you c'n pick up straight away. You gotta get to know people 'fore you can tell who they, uh, you know."

"Maybe."

The movie blares at them, the colours candy-bright and confusing. Steve sighs and reaches for the remote control.

"Fuck, I can't take anymore of this crap," he slurs, switching it off. "You win, I guess."

"Yeah," Billy mumbles, suddenly too tired and maudlin to care. They sit there in the dark, heads swimming, eyes swarming.

"I'm exhausted," Steve complains, staring at the blank screen.

"So go to bed, dumbass."

"No, no, it's....like...." Steve flops his hands around in frustration. "Ever been so worn out that you can't sleep?"

"Oh, that? Feeling your pain, dude." Billy holds himself tense all over and stretches. His entire body feels as though it's made of cold wire. "Shit, do we have school tomorrow?"

Steve smiles at his stupidity. "It's Friday, idiot."

"What about work?" Billy presses. That mossy taste that he can't stand is back in his mouth. He promises himself, not for the first time, that he's going to quit drinking.

Steve rubs his face and moans. "Fuuuuuuuuuck me. Double shift. We're gonna get fired."

"We're gonna die," Billy agrees. He stands up and extends a hand to Steve, who shakes his head.

"Too tired to move," he explains, stretching out his legs and wincing. "Can we talk some more?"

"Sure." Billy settles himself back down beside him and watches as he fiddles with his thumbs. Steve slides him a couple of shifty glances and seems to forget how his mouth works. His tongue flicks in and out, over and over.

"I was just thinking about those faggots who came in to give us the talk," he admits. "Did it feel like they were, uh, spreading propaganda?"

Billy barks out a disbelieving laugh. "What the hell?"

"No, really," Steve insists. His eyes are as pink as conjunctivitis. "That's how it works, you know. They convince kids that it's, like, accepted or some shit, and then they have sex with them when they're a little older. I read it in a psychology journal."

"....That's honestly retarded."

"I think it's true." Steve lapses into a moody silence. Billy shakes his head at him and gets up to slot Pulp Fiction into the VHS.

They drift in and out of the movie, not really paying attention. Steve peels labels off bottles and won't look at Billy, won't pay attention to Samuel L. Jackson on the telly, Billy leans his thumping head up against the couch and closes his eyes.

"Are you asleep?" Steve asks him, sounding very far away.

Billy doesn't answer at first, because the comfy-cozy feeling has seeped away and Steve's being a pain in the ass. "No, I'm not."

"I was wondering…." Steve throws back his tussle of perfect brown hair. "What did you think about the guys that did the talk?"

Billy groans. "Steve, it's like you're fuckin' obsessed. _Leave it._ "

"Just tell me."

"Well, uh…. They gave a cheery, sensible talk in the auditorium about how it's okay to be different. To be anything, in fact, so long as you're careful about it and don't hurt anybody; and then they came back to their cars to find that their tyres had been slashed.” Billy snorts at the memory. "I think they disproved themselves by existing," he says. "Sure, they were nice. And they didn't shove anything at us," he adds, giving Steve a meaningful glare. "But the whole thing that happened with their cars showed them up. It's not okay to be different."

"Yeah," Steve murmurs, "but only if people, y'know, see you. I guess it's cool if you do it in private."

"I guess," Billy concurs. "What do you mean?"

"I mean-" Steve takes a deep breath. "I mean that if we were to be different, only to, umm, see what it was like, for two seconds, then nobody would know. It wouldn't matter."

"Not really.”

They sit there, not looking at one another, while the movie drones on in the background. Billy coughs.   
It strikes Steve that, even though they've both had three beers each and half of a vodka bottle, they'll remember whatever happens next in the morning. He wonders how well regret goes with a hangover. Billy puts an arm around his shoulders and, very subtly, pulls him in towards him. If you were watching, you'd think it was an accident.  
In a weird way, the kiss, which lasts for about two milliseconds, if that, feels familiar, no different from a hug, or a meandering conversation about feelings. It's an experiment; it's something that two hard-drinking suburban kids are not supposed to do.

Like any good pair of scientists, they have an objective.   
Eyes remain shut.   
Lips do not move.   
Tongues curl back to prevent contamination.   
It's a pretty tense two milliseconds, though, and they spring away like magnets repelling one another.

"Did that feel....?"

"I don't know.

"But was it wrong?"

"I don't think it was anything."

Liam gets to his feet and groans at the cricks in his knees.

"One-time thing, right?" he throws over his shoulder.

"Right," Billy agrees, following suit. "Won't happen again....shit, I think I left my toothbrush at home."

*****

The next time it happens, they're at the cinema, watching something stupid. It has trucks and explosions and a guy getting set on fire.   
They sit there in the dark, half-empty theatre, in a row by themselves.

"This sort of sucks," Billy whispers.

Steve gives himself a moment to appreciate the bloody finale of a car chase before he replies, "Yeah, kinda."

"I can't belive," Billy goes on, picking up a head of steam, "that I paid ten dollars for us both to watch this crap."

"It was actually eight dollars fifty; I paid for the popcorn, remember?"

"Oh. Right." Billy brushes it off with a shake of his head. "But we're still stuck here for the next-" he checks his watch in the light of a bomb blast, ”hour and a half. This fucking sucks."

"We could just leave," Steve suggests. Billy splutters.

"But that'd be money wasted! No, we gotta stay here and see it through. We can complain about it later."

They sit back in their seats and look on as the guy goes up with a _whumpf_. As he howls and kicks onscreen, Steve is suddenly reminded of what being set aflame feels like. He thinks back to the two-millisecond-long experiment in his sitting room, tries to recall how it felt. All he remembers is that it was too short to feel like anything.   
He thinks and he ponders and he decides.

"Hey. Billy"

"Right here."

"Do remember that time we....?"

It takes a moment for Billy to get it. When he does, his response is guarded and tense: "I do. Why?"

Steve shrugs. "I just thought, y'know, this is boring, the place is pretty much empty....I'm not pressuring you into anything."

Billy scowls. "There are people here, Steve!” he hisses.

"Yeah, but they're watching the movie. And it's dark as shit in here. Nobody would see.”

Billy goes quiet, and nothing more is said for the next half-an-hour.   
In the movie dreamtime, buildings are obliterated. A helicopter hangs over the rubble like a metal dragonfly. The scene cuts to a man undressing a woman. The camera peeks over his shoulder at her flushed face. Her lips are ever-so-slightly open. Her heavy blue eyes drift south and snag on something interesting; her tongue appears at the corner of her mouth, coral-coloured against the crimson lipstick laquer.

Steve wants to say that it's fuckin' ridiculous, but he's got a little lump of jealousy caught in his throat. He wants someone to look at him like that, the way that Hollywood trash is looking at that hewn granite statue of a leading man. He wants it so bad he can taste it. He reminds himself that no-one ever died of virginity and tries to quash the desperate slow burn of want.

He puts his hand into the popcorn box, there's only one, because Billy's almost broke, and finds another hand waiting for him. He pauses, trying to work out if it's a joke. Billy says nothing, staring at the sensual gropefest going down onscreen.   
Steve gathers a few kernels into his fingers, withdraws them, and eats them. They taste depressingly sweaty. It's nice to know that Billy's as nervous as he is.

He slides his hand back into the popcorn box and leaves it there, as though it's a glove put down on a bus seat and forgotten about.   
Billy's fingers are warm and grease-slick. Steve points his eyes at the movie, his mind trapped in a box of limp, slimy popcorn and skin itching against foreign skin. He lets his pinky wander, lets it trace the minute creases of Billy's finger-joints. It brushes against his nails, which are ragged and infected around the edges. They're as hard as seashells.

At that exact moment, the woman in the movie-who's tits-out naked at this stage-staggers and collapses, her head dissolving into a spray of crimson muck. Steve's heart bucks. A cable jump of nerve signals rockets down his arm and instructs his hand to clench, to seek comfort. Billy grunts in surprise.

"No offence," he hisses, "but this is really fuckin' gay of you."

Steve coughs his giggles into the sleeve of his shirt. The weird, stealthy atmosphere vanishes. Mr. Granite McSuperSpy wakes up onscreen in a flurry of terror-sweat, bouncing upright in his bed. The headsplosion, it turns out, was just a dream. Steve groans at the stupidity.

"This movie," he says, "this fucking movie, is so fucking weird, I swear to God-"

Billy wraps his buttery popcorn smelling hand around Steve's head and pulls them together, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut.

This kiss is so different. It makes the previous kiss look, in retrospect, like a cold glare on a subway carriage at midday. It makes everything Mickey and Mallory ever did seem juvenile and insincere. Billy's mouth tastes of hot salt and his hair is as heavy and warm as wet summer hay. Steve's mind is sandblasted, strip-mined, made empty and silent. There is only the present of a dark cinema theatre, a gunfight barking and rattling on the screen, and another person's lower lip held between his teeth.

They pull away and glance around like murderers, looking for possible witnesses.   
Everybody's following the movie, enraptured by a daring vehicular leap across two halves of a bridge. Steve breathes out through his nose and sits back.   
After a moment of confusion, Billy gets the message and turns away. That's the last of it, the very last. There can't be any more....whatever these things are. It was an experiment. They were different for two minutes, and it was fucking great, and now they can go back to normal.   
When the end credits start to scroll, they get up, stretch, and make their way out of the theatre. Steve offers Billy a pizza at his house, and maybe a sleepover, which is what they usually do. Billy accepts with no reluctance. It's just another one of those buddy-buddy rituals that guys who are friends enjoy the world over. It's perfectly innocent.

*****

They have sex the next morning in Steve's bed.

Here's how it happens: Billy, being considerate for once, makes his pal chocolate-chip pancakes with sloshy puddles of butter melting on them and brings them up to where he sleeps. Steve laughs in pure delight and noogies him, his hard knuckles grating the soft stubble of Billy's head. He makes them vanish, yawning as he eats, sharing a couple with Billy.

When they're done, they have nothing left to do but stare at each other and try to make small talk. It's like chatting about the weather in the face of an oncoming train. Steve gives up during a particularly banal conversation about baseball statistics and leans forward, fast, before he can change his mind.

The plates slide off the shifting covers and thump onto the carpet, forgotten. They taste chocolate and butter on each other's tongues.

Afterwards, when the bed is made and they're washing the plates, Billy looks at him sideways and asks him something, and Steve bites back a delighted grin and shrugs. He says, "I dunno. I guess it doesn't really matter anymore." Billy grunts. Then he turns and, still wearing the soapy gloves, grabs his head and gives him a fierce kiss on his crown.

The next few weeks drip by like thick syrup. They go to school, they go home, they count down the hours until their alarms ring and they can do it all again.

Then, one night, they go bowling with a couple of friends. The moment they set foot in the bowling alley, Billy acts like Steve was never born. He bounces over to the girls and picks them up one at a time, back bending with the effort. They laugh and tease him. One of them links arms with Billy, and off they go. Steve, his stomach shrivelling, stays at the arcade machines and never gets his shoes.

Billy tries to catch his eye a few times, but Steve stares at Grand Racing Pro over a twelve-year-old's shoulder and ignores him. He can feel the anger rolling off Billy towards him. It's like standing with your back to a sandstorm. He knows how mad he is, and how he gets when he's upset. But Billy made his fucking choices; if he wants to bowl with girls, he can bowl with girls.

Steve honestly doesn't care.

After a while, he wanders a little closer, and hears a few snippets of conversation.

The phrase "lanky little faggot" catches his ear. Billy's bitching about him, like some Minnesota Mom after one glass of Merlot too many. Steve leans up against a vending machine and listens in.

"....and a nose the size of a planet," Billy says, concluding what was obviously a lengthy rant. The girls share nervous, tinkling laughs.

"Don't be like that, Billy," one of them tries. "Steve's such a great guy. If it weren't for him, I'd have failed last year's Algebra finals." Her friend nods.

Billy gets up for his turn. He slings the ball down the alley before the pin machine's out of the way. The girls emit tinny shrieks, but it cranks up just in time for a messy strike. Billy always bowls well when he's angry.

"Yeah, he's nice," Billy snips as he comes back. "But I know him better than you guys do. He's not Mr. fuckin' Perfect, though. I could tell you about the stuff he gets up to on weekends....but you guys aren't eighteen yet, are you?"

The girls look at one another and, through the telepathy peculiar to women, make up their minds à deux. "Billy," the blonde one says, leaping to her feet, "we have to go. I have curfew."

"And I'm sleeping over at her house," her buddy adds, following suit.

Billy glances away at the mention of sleepovers, like he's just thought something he shouldn't have. "It's only half-nine," he protests. It sounds weak, even to Steve.

"Yeah, well, that's my mom." The girls share one last too-loud giggle and leave, their tennis shoes muted on the scuzzy arcade carpet.

Billy hops over the railing that separates the alley from the pool area, which earns him a glare from the guy working the counter. Steve slopes over to him. Billy doesn't look at him. He fishes around in his pocket for his cigarettes.

The guy behind the counter strides over, his face flushed. "God damn it, Hargrove, don't you dare smoke those in here-"

"Fine. Whatever." Billy flips up his middle finger at the manager's retreating back and crushes the box in his fist. He weaves through the maze of machines towards the exit. Steve follows him. The point-blank rage at Steve's childishness has cooled to a dead indifference. Billy wants to blame everyone else for his own fuck-ups?

That's fine with Steve.

Unfortunately, they came in the same car - Billy's. This means one hell of a ride home, and Steve feels the indifference melt away to weary dread. He folds his long self into the passenger seat, slams shut the door, and braces himself.

To his surprise-and relief, Billy chooses to stew in silence instead of yelling at him. It's uncomfortable, but it beats the stress-headache that always erupts whenever he yells, so Steve's okay with it. He just sits there, enjoying the scenery. Hawkins’ is pretty in the dark. Yellow windows shining steady between the great black stripes of trees.

They pull into Steve's driveway, to Billy's annoyance.

"Why are we here?" he asks, trying to keep his tone level.

Billy shrugs. "Come inside for a while," he mumbles, staring at the steering wheel. "I won't keep you long."

"On a school night? Fuck that," Steve snorts, but he gets out of the car anyway and allows Billy to follow him inside.

The house is dark, Steve’s parents are visiting an aunt of his somewhere in Idaho. Steve reaches out and grabs Billy's hand, his own palm warm and damp and bony. Even though he's mad as all hell with the boy, Steve can't help but mellow a little. He's led down the upstairs and to the left, which is where Steve's room is. His heartbeat picks up a little. The door clicks shut behind them.

A moment later, a hard fist sinks into his stomach.  
He falls backward and lands on his ass, the shock snaking up his spine to buzz his shoulders. Panicking and wheezing, he scrambles away from where Billy's shadow looms like a raven's.

"Billy, what the fuck-"

"Get on your knees, faggot," Billy hisses, sounding nervous and excited and balls out crazy all at the same time.

Steve rolls himself into a crouch and springs at him. He rears up and over him, he’s so tall and hardy, but Steve manages to topple him to the ground. Sprawling on top of Billy, he manages to grab his wrists and presses them into the rug, grinding them with the heels of his hands until the throaty screams trail into whimpers of pain.

"You fucking asshole," he gasps, struggling into a sitting position. "What were you thinking?! What even was that?"

Billy glares at him, his eyes popping and bloodshot with hatred. "It doesn't matter," he snarls, drumming his heels against the floor. His teeth flash as he jerks his head up to bite, but he can't get at anything. "Let me up, motherfucker!"

"Not until you tell me what that was about," Steve growls, grinding his molars halfway to powder.

Billy groans and squirms, but eventually he gives in. "I was mad at you," he mutters, "because you went all pissy on me, and I wanted you to....pay."

"That....is so stupid, I think it's making me dumber trying to understand it," Steve snorts. But he rolls off of Billy and flops down beside him. “So 'get on your knees’ was that your way of asking for a blowjob?"

"I'm sorry."

"Pretty retarded. Did you think that I'd be awed by your incredible right hook?"

"I said I was sorry," Billy reminds him, tone sullen and miserable. After a moment of silence, he says, "Guess this is the end."

"The end of what?' Then Steve remembers. "Oh. Well, uh, it needn't be."

"What do you mean?"

"Uhh, it's clearly, y'know, a communication problem. You think that it's okay to hit people to get the things you want. I don't. We can work past that, Billy."

"You sound like a magazine for girls. Like one of those agony aunts who tell dried-up old bitches why they can't get laid." He sighs and rolls inwards, so that his whole body is pressed against Steve's side. He curves into him the way a chin fits on a violin and says, "I'm really sorry. I was being a dick."

"Hey, it's not all your fault." Steve snakes an arm underneath his head. "I shouldn't have been so jealous. But seriously, from now on, talk to me. Okay?"

"I know. I will." Billy wriggles so that his head is cradled in the sharp crook of his shoulder. "I gotta go home, I suppose."

"Hmmm...." That soft hair is so warm, so solid, in this twilit dreamworld.   
Billy considers the car ride home, the distance between them widening again, crackling with loneliness and thoughts of sex and kisses.   
Steve considers the head on his arm, the knee jutting into his thigh-even the throb of the bruise on his stomach is somehow illicit, a souvenir of something tasty and forbidden. He wants to show it off. He knows that he'll press his fingers to it in bed later on to rouse the pain, like pressing rewind on a tape.

"I don't have to be home 'til eleven," Billy says, offhand, tossing it out like trivia. Steve smiles, and when the cloud in his eyes lifts, Steve realises that he was afraid.

*****

There's a reason, or maybe several, and Steve finds at least one at half past three on a black March morning.

"That thing that happened," he murmurs against the hot whorls of Billy's ear, "that happened in January...."

Billy stiffens, then snaps.

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"Did anything-"

"Shut up, Harrington."

Steve hears the threat embodied in his own surname. He quietens, wondering with a white hot shock if something was done, if anybody put their hands or mouth where they shouldn't have, where Steve smears his own.

Days later, Billy sighs and, with the utmost patience, in his kindest tone, explains that Steve is being retarded. "Nobody did shit to me," he drawls, not looking away from the Playboy website. "I just hate getting caught, man. All there is to it."

"Why?"

Billy's slack jaw tightens into a thin grim line. "It makes me feel so fucking stupid," he growls through his teeth. "And it should do the same to you."

Steve says nothing. The girl on the monitor stares at Billy, smiling like the dopey cunt she is, her nipples pincered between her fingers. Steve abandons his homework and slinks, cattish, across the carpet to stand behind him. He rests his chin on Billy’s head and winds his arms around him. After a moment of pretending that nothing's going on, Billy reaches up and, defeated, grasps Steve's hand in his own.

Steve smirks and kisses his sweating temple. "Why the hell are you looking at this?" he asks him, wondering if they have time to do anything before Steve's mother comes home with the groceries.

He can't see the blush, but he can feel it rising against his own cheek.

"I don't just like you," Billy mumbles. "I'm still kind of normal."

*****

That thing that happened with the girl?   
Totally not Billy's fault.   
Yeah, it takes two to tango, but someone has to get the dance started and it sure as fuck wasn't him.

Her name was Evangeline, and she was in college.   
They met at the mall; he'd been chewing his way through a pretzel, spinning his phone around on the table, trying not to think about the situation with Steve, when this absolute bombshell; we’re talking _atomic, hydrogen, a playboy bunny_ , strolled right up to his table and introduced herself.

If Steve had seen her, he'd have gone as crazy as Billy did. No doubt about it.   
She was blonde, but not porn star blonde, no, her hair was curtains and drapes natural.   
Had tits like Dolly Parton, sure, but those were organic too. When Billy stood up to say hi, he discovered that she had a few inches on him as far as height went. That was cool. That was very cool.

They talked, the conversation drifting towards pickup territory no matter how hard Billy tried to keep the course straight. After a few hopeless segues into movies and music, he gave up and let her lay herself out for him. Within twenty minutes, they'd exchanged phone numbers. She gave him a hug, and Billy decided that the foreign smush of her twenty something year old breasts against him felt great. He watched her ass sway on through the crowd and made a game attempt to blow a spark out of his cold flint.  
  
Sure he could get any girl he wanted, he could look a girls way and she’d have her legs open, cunt on display, no trouble.   
But this was a grade A, level 10, Pamela Anderson type and Billy was just about frothing at the mouth.

See, Steve had been acting like a prick. It must've been the plans they'd made together, they were at a critical stage, and Steve was getting cold feet.   
Plus, either Billy suddenly wasn't doing enough for him or he'd gotten tired of their little experiment, since he'd started blowing him off and standing him up whenever they were due to hang out. It was pissing Billy off. If Steve had elected to rejoin the shit head zombies, then that was fine.   
If he hadn't the guts to tell Billy, well, that was fine too. He'd been getting a little sick of it himself, anyway. It was always treated as an afterthought, a shameful footnote tacked onto a dull evening.

Christ, he ruminated, you know it's time to move on when you're a pair of teenage boys and the sex is boring.

So he put Steve on the back burner and concentrated on getting something good going with Evangeline.   
  
They drove up into the mountains on weekends to smoke and fuck. What always stuck in his mind after these fumbling trysts was the heavy, sharp smell of her cunt.   
It clung to his fingers for days after every time, and he began to associate eating handheld foodstuffs with nausea and dread.

It was so.. _impersonal_. Like they were just two bodies. She'd finish up, catch her breath, and pull back on her jeans in the time that it took his brain to start up again. One night, she gave him her thong, just tucked it into his pocket with a wink and a whispered, "You can keep this. Do whatever with it-I don't care."

It's still wadded up at the back of his drawer. His stomach twists whenever he thinks of it. Nothing could ever crawl out of his closet and be scary enough to rival what he's got in his desk.

So, they're at a party at a friend's house, and, get this, there’s _no beer_.

The movie is _Resevoir Dogs_ , but without alcohol it's like watching the same Care Bears movie they’d watch that night at Steve’s. Billy moans and passes comments; Steve tries to convince the friend that it doesn't matter all that much. It's shaping up to be a miserable night. Then, Billy remembers something.

"I got a friend who's legal," he announces to the others. "Lemme give her a call-she'll fix us up."

And fix them up she does. Evangeline arrives twenty minutes later, her arms laden with bags of booze. Tequila, beer, whiskey....there's even a half-bottle of champagne in there, which she says she got at a party she was just at. She's slurring her words and making goofy shapes with her hands. It's obvious that she wants Billy, but Steve either doesn't notice or doesn't care. The lot of them spend a while staring at movies, getting that silly kind of drunk. For the first time in three weeks, Billy feels the muddled stirrings of happiness.

Steve and the friend slope off someplace else to sleep.

"So, like, where's the bedroom in this shit hole, baby?" Evangeline hisses, her breath condensing on Billy's ear. He shoots her his best smile and leads her up the stairs, clutching the bannister the whole way.

She jumps him before he's even shut the door. Her sharp teeth crimp his nape as he turns the key in the lock, and he winces.

"Eva," he whispers, "be gentle, okay? That hurts-"

"No, shut up!" she giggles, pinching his stomach with her cold, plum coloured finger nails. She grabs his wrist in a grip like an industrial strength vice, like a medieval stock, and wrenches his own hand away from the door handle. "I got stuff to show you, baby...."

She pulls him down with her onto a bed that smells of deodorant and spittle. A bright image appears like a lamp in Billy's inner eye.  
Steve smiling filthy sweet, arching like one of his cats as he stretches. Billy grabs it and wraps it round himself, so that by the time she's got her skintight jeans over her ankles, and his own pants over his, he’s in the other room, dreaming with the one person who'd never do anything like this to him.

  
*****

They stand by her car in the light of a grey sunrise. Evangeline shuffles her feet and doesn't know what to say.

Billy does, though. "I never want to see you again. I mean it."

She scowls at him, her eyes shadowed and hungover. "You should've said something," she whines, crossing her arms and pushing out her bottom lip at him. It's the colour of the medicine Billy's mother would give him on the days he was sick. Whatever it was that she drank last night at the college party, it wasn't meant for human consumption.

"I told you to be gentle," Billy protests, spreading his hands out. "You fucking ignored me. What? You're such a damn _cunt_ that you can't read body language? I didn't want to, but you made me do it anyway."

Eva smirks at him. "Don't be stupid. Girls can't do that."

Billy blinks at her. In the space of that blink, at the apex of the millisecond, when his eyes are shut tight, he realises that she's evil. Those terrible things that she did to him last night? She'll do them again and again and again until someone kills her. That's just the way she is.

As his eyes fly open again, it comes to Billy that he's just the same, and so is Steve. In their own way, they're as bad as she is.

"Just go home to your boyfriend, Evangeline," he sighs, and turns away to trudge back into the house.

When he trails back into the friend's crime scene of a bedroom, his heart skitters. Steve's sitting on the bed with a face like God's wrath.

"Have a good time last night?" he spits. Billy's stomach rolls, and he grabs onto a nearby chair to steady himself.

“Why d’you ask that?" he mutters through clenched teeth, praying for everything to stop dead and settle.

Steve shrugs. "Did you fuck her?"

He looks up and, for the first time, takes in the full horror show of Billy’s mistakes. He takes one look at how badly he's landed and rises to his feet, wobbling.

"Oh, God. Oh no. Billy....if I ever get my hands on that bitch, I'll fucking tear her apart!"

"She's gone. You won't ever see her again," Billy tells him. His legs feel so fucking tired. He stumbles towards the bed, arms reaching out because he's sure he'll fall, he's crumbling, Steve's arms are around him and holding on tight to his empty sack of a body and somebody's mowing their lawn outside.

Steve drags him to the bed, scoops him up in his arms as though to carry him over his threshold and lays him down on the mattress. All of Billy's muscles recognise the foul smell from the night before and scream. He screams too, a thin high moan.

And there's fuck-all Steve can do except lie there beside him and listen to his story, his apologies. And accept all the "I'm so sorry"s, the endless repetitions of "I've been such an idiot". And not touch, because someone else got there before him and everything's raw and scratched up.

They leave the friend's house at eight-thirty. He's still asleep. Steve whispers that it's okay, they didn't hear anything. "He doesn't know that it happened in his bed. He won't be mad at you, Billy. C'mon, let's get you home".

A fifteen-minute shower washes the crusty lipstick from his neck, but the hickeys are still as livid as sunrises on his collarbone. His very blood feels polluted and sluggish, as though the horrible white emissions that Evangeline used to leave on his fingers have tainted his arteries.

But the days turn into weeks, long lazy stretches of returning to the normality of school and work and fighting people in the parking lot. The bruises fade the way memories do, and after a while it's as though Evangeline never even existed.

Soon, not so long afterwards, is when Billy admits that he loves Steve; that even though he knows for a fact that every bit of normalcy will slowly shrink from his life because of his love for this boy, he's okay with that.

And Steve is okay with it too.

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy the idea of 90's Billy & Steve tbh. What did you think?


End file.
